A financial probe and £1m from an ex bookie: the truth behind Ukip

By Andrew Alderson and Robert Watts

12:01AM GMT 11 Feb 2007

Bolstered by defections from the Tories, and with his party's vote rising election by election, Nigel Farage struck a confident note as he announced plans for the future of the United Kingdom Independence Party (Ukip) last week.

Behind the scenes, however, the party he leads faces a series of questions over funding. The euro-sceptic Ukip is being investigated by the Electoral Commission, which says that it is concerned that its most recent accounts were filed more than six months late. It is also investigating a series of "separate issues".

An investigation by this newspaper has also revealed that Alan Bown, a former bookmaker, has bankrolled Ukip with more than £1 million. He has provided 40 per cent of the party's declared donations in the past four years.

Mr Bown, 64, made his fortune with a chain of 17 bookmakers, which he sold to Coral Racing five years ago. The sale netted him several million pounds, but he still owns a substantial property empire and has numerous other business interests. He is also a director of Margate Football Club and runs a company in Ramsgate, Kent, that sells Turkish nightwear to 800 clothes shops.

Today, however, the businessman devotes most of his energies to Ukip. Whereas most political donors take a back-seat role, Mr Bown sits on the party's 15-strong national executive committee and is the leading organiser of the party's campaigns, taking responsibility for leaflets, billboards and other promotional literature.

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As well as vast cash donations to Ukip's bank accounts, Mr Bown also pays for the day-to-day running costs, such as hotel bills, printing costs, advertisements, telephone bills and even staff wages out of his own pocket. Two years ago he spent £6,500 on Ukip beer mats and nearly £800 on branded balloons. "I will continue to donate large chunks," said Mr Bown. "It's the only party that is telling the truth about the EU." Although his donations have been properly recorded, more than £1 million has been given to Ukip in three years which is not recorded on the Electoral Commission's central register because Ukip say these payments are "under the reportable limit".

This is entirely legal; however, it allowed 96 per cent of nearly £300,000 paid to the party's south-east office in 2004 not to be published on the register. Any donation of more than £5,000 to a party's headquarters must be declared. The same is true of any payment of more than £1,000 made to a party's regional office. If an individual donor breeches this limit within a calendar year, the donation must be declared to the Electoral Commission. The commission refused to provide details of its inquiries.

Mr Farage confirmed the Electoral Commission investigation. "Look, the accounts were late, very late and that was clearly unacceptable. It will never happen again.

"We are discussing three or four other compliance issues with the Electoral Commission, concerning the validity of donors and how we have listed them. I am confident we can resolve these issues."

Mr Farage blamed the late filing of the accounts on Ukip not being able to afford a full-time treasurer.

Ukip was formed in 1993 by a group of patriots who wanted to field candidates opposed to the Maastricht Treaty. Within a year, it put up candidates in 24 out of 87 seats at the European elections and secured 157,000 votes. In 2004, the party won 12 seats, polling 2.6 million votes: two Euro-MPs have since left the party to become independents.

The party's vote at the general election has risen from just over 100,000 in 1997 to just over 600,000 in 2005.

Yet Ukip's membership is falling. It currently has around 18,000 members, down from a peak of more than 26,000 two years ago. Ukip revealed last week that, as part of a fresh assault on the Conservative Party, it is likely to be renamed the Independence Party ahead of the May local government elections.

Mr Farage said the party wanted to appeal to voters who had been "abandoned by David Cameron". This was perhaps retaliation for an earlier claim from the Tory leader that many of Ukip's members were "fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists".

Ukip leaders are determined to be seen as more than just an anti-EU party. Ukip has pledged to "develop a full range of domestic and foreign policies". Its logo of "Ukip" running across a giant "£" and its slogan "Let's Get Our Country Back" show only too well, however, where the party's true priority lies.

Ukip's headquarters are close to Newton Abbot in Devon. Supporters might expect some "Beware Brussels" road signs on the approach road, but not for the first time the political group throws up a surprise. Instead, visitors to the party's new home arrive on a beech tree-lined road that leads to one of the few industrial estates in the world where motorists are warned to watch out for stray deer.

Furthermore, little more than a stone's throw from Ukip's Lexdrum House is the site of one of the fiercest battles during the English Civil War, where Royalists held out against the Roundheads three and a half centuries ago.

Given Ukip's own propensity for bitter in-fighting, this makes the choice of the party's headquarters -- not far from the Dartmoor National Park - seem a more appropriate location.

It is from this unlikely base that Ukip is plotting a 21st century rebellion of its own in the shape of a carefully-orchestrated campaign to elevate itself to the status of one of the country's major political parties rather than a quirky also ran.

But why have the headquarters in Newton Abbot? An official said: "If our HQ was in Birmingham, our supporters wouldn't be so prepared to pop up in their Morris Minors. We can summon up an army of crusties (elderly people) to stuff envelopes. We can whistle up 100 people in 24 hours flat."

Despite its modest electoral successes, the party has found it difficult to shake off an image that it is run and supported by "little Englanders", largely chauvinistic men who live in the past.

Even more disturbing for Ukip's chances of electoral progress are suggestions from critics that the party is racist.

Ukip insists such criticism is unfair. It claims it protects itself from extremists by insisting that all members sign a pledge supporting the party's principles. Prospective candidates must state they have no past association with extremists groups.

Yet men such as Ashley Mote, the former Ukip Euro-MP suspended from the party in 2004, have done little to suggest that Ukip is all embracing.

Mr Mote, 71, has become a vice-president of the far-Right group Identity, Tradition, Sovereignty. It is led by Bruno Gollnisch, of France's National Front, who is awaiting a court verdict on charges of Holocaust denial.

Geoffrey Bloom, the Ukip Euro-MP for Yorkshire and Humber, hardly emerged as a champion of women's rights when he said three years ago: "No self-respecting small businessman with a brain would ever employ a lady of child-bearing age."

Since then, the party has done little to counter criticisms of sexism. None of its Euro-MPs is a woman and Ukip was unable to say this weekend how many of its members are female. "We have our share of women," said one senior official, adding: "And it's right that we should."

Ukip has a well-earned reputation for internal feuding. Many of its leading figures, including Robert Kilroy-Silk, the former television presenter, have had short-lived associations with the party.

Mr Kilroy-Silk, who resigned from the party two years ago after losing a power struggle, said: "The party is regarded by those outside it as a joke. I am ashamed to be a member. I cannot ask people to vote for it because it has no policies, no spokesmen, no energy, no vision and no idea how Britain should be governed."

Mr Farage, 42, the party's fourth leader, is a formidable orator, but has often made headlines for the wrong reasons. In 2004, it was for allegedly quaffing £100 bottles of champagne at lap-dancing bars. Last year, the married father of four appeared in the News of the World when his alleged lover accused him of wanting to be spanked during their romps. Mr Farage denied a sexual relationship but admitted he was in the "dog house" with his wife for staying overnight with a 25-year-old.

Mr Farage is not the first leader to have had embarrassing disclosures made about him. It was revealed last year that Roger Knapman, then leader and a supporter of the party's strict immigration policy, had used cheap eastern European labourers to renovate his West Country mansion.

He insisted, however, there was "no contradiction" between what he was doing and the objectives of the party, which had warned that "a flood of migrants" from east European states joining the EU would be "bad for Britain".

Although two Tory peers have defected to Ukip in recent months, many senior Tories remain sceptical that Mr Farage can lead his party to greatness.

One former Tory minister attended a Ukip meeting and was unimpressed by him.

"He harangued us," the grandee said. "He speaks to people like they are all idiots. In fact, on listening to him, I was reminded of Hitler."